The Burn

Thirty-odd years have passed since that hot April Fool’s Day morning in 1973. I have kept the secrets of that morning. I have never once told another living soul about what happened -- well, not what really happened. I kept my secrets, as we all do. In fact, I kept them so well that I started to forget what had actually happened.

In almost forgetting the truth, I committed the worst crime of all. I almost killed a precious little girl, a horribly broken little girl who wanted nothing more than her mother’s love. There is no happy-ending to my story -- only pain, heartache, sadness, and loss.

* * *

I didn’t even realize that I was angry as I walked into the kitchen. At ten years old, I was not tall enough to actually see the chicken inside the frying pan. I could certainly see the handle, though, and that was good enough, since I only had to move the pan from one burner to another.
Both of my parents were busy in the bathroom. I never knew exactly what they were getting “all cleaned up” for but I do remember having the impression that one or both of them had to go to work. That is why I was in the kitchen, standing on my tip toes trying to see what was causing the pan to smoke. My mom had told me to come in here and take the pan off the burner.

Mother walked into the kitchen and I hurriedly grabbed the handle with both hands stretching my arms out so I didn’t get it to close to me. With her in the room and glaring at me, I didn’t have the time to indulge my curiosity or to even worry about how safe it was for me to reach across the stove and pull the pan the way I had to because of my height.

“You didn’t think I heard you, did you? You think I’m mean. Well, let me show you what mean is! Or are you too stupid to understand?” I knew the wicked gleam in my mother’s eyes and the sick, twisted smile that slowly appeared on her face. My world narrowed to just my mother’s face. Yes, it was that look, the one that haunted my nightmares. The same look that she always got on her face right before she hurt me really bad.

I could hear the heavy thump of my heart beating in my chest; I wondered if my heart would pop out at some point, half hoping it would, to make this situation stop.
I didn’t even bother to look for a place to hide. I knew I had to stand there and take whatever my mother meted out. Running, trying to block the blows, any type of resistance, no matter how small, would only make my punishment much, much worse.

“But, Scooby Doo is on. Mama, I’m sorry. I promise I will do better. Look, Mama, I took the pan off the burner, just like you wanted.” There was a hint of pleading in my voice and I knew that I would regret telling her about my favorite cartoon, Scooby Doo. I knew without anyone having to explain to me now that she knew that I liked it that she would make sure that I never got to see it again. If I liked something to much, showed a favorite, she would make sure that I didn’t have that thing.

I had started to hate myself for not being strong enough to stop my mother’s abuse, for not being old enough to make other adults listen when I described my mother’s cruelty. My own self-loathing, anger, and fear, all boiling together, left me weak, unable to resist whatever would come next.

“You know I hate whining. Do you have to whine every time you open your mouth?” Mother continued, “You know I never wanted your sorry ass. I should have killed you when you were born. But you were such a damn ugly baby, I felt sorry for you.”

She grabbed an oven mitt, held the bottom of the frying pan with one hand and the handle with the other, and slowly raised the pan into the air. She was going to hit me with it, hard. Hot grease slid out of the pan and ran down my hand. “You know, I think you’re getting too fat. I don’t think you need to eat for a while.” I watched in disbelief as the chicken hit the floor.

* * *

I slowly realized that my mother had left the room. I didn’t understand; mother was gone and yet I was still standing. I had not been slapped to the floor, or kicked, and nothing seemed to be broken.

I didn’t look up until the pan fell out of my hand and smacked against the floor. The sound seemed to bring me back from the edge of the pit that was growing in my mind, that dark place where I seemed to be spending more and more time. Although I had been drawn back from the edge, the pit remained open and inviting. That dark place where I would go to hide from her in my mind. I would shut out all the pain and hide there, not hearing, not speaking, and not feeling anything.

I didn’t move my body at all; I had become very good at becoming completely still, not even twitching an eyelash. I allowed my eyes to travel up my arm, first taking in my fragile little elbow. OK, it looked the same, no problem. Then I examined the rest of my arm. Yes, it was burned. I understood burns since it was not the first time she had burned me. Still, not too bad, the burn would go away in a week or two, and it didn’t hurt all that much.

When my eyes got to my wrist, though, my stomach turned over at the sight. Somehow, I knew that my hand should be at the end of my wrist, but it surely didn’t look right. I looked closely. My mind wouldn’t tell me what I was looking at. All the skin was gone, as if it had never been there. There wasn’t any blood. I kept thinking that there should be blood and lots of it. At first, I didn’t realize that the pinkish white things that I was looking at were my bones. They were not all white and shiny like bones I had seen at the natural history museum.

My eyes traveled out to the end of what I thought was my fingers, there were no fingernails. I just didn’t understand where the top part of my hand had gone. It was there earlier, all normal looking and whole. Now there were chucks of it missing. Just gone, just like that.

“God damn it, there better not be another palmetto bug! You know I’m going to be late,” my father yelled as he came stomping into the room. His eyes immediately fixed on the hand that I was still holding up.

I didn’t realize that I had screamed. The need to breathe is what finally made me stop, as my father roughly grabbed me up in his arms and lurched toward the back door.
I had never seen my father like this. Fury was written on his face. His arms trembled as he held me. He was walking out the back door with me just as if I were a bag of garbage. He was going to throw me out! I closed my eyes, because I was going to cry if I had to look at his face when he threw me away. I knew that would only make him angrier. Daddy always got angry when I cried.

When my father knocked on the neighbor woman’s door, I was confused about why we were there. As she opened the door, my father immediately thrust me into the surprised woman’s arms.

“Take her; we don’t have a phone,” he said as he dumped me off and walked briskly away.

I wanted to cry, scream, beg, anything to make him take me home. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t know this woman who was busily settling me on the sofa and examining my hand. She hissed deep in her throat.

“Stay right here and don’t move!,” she whispered as she left the room. I could hear her in the other room she had called for an ambulance. She came back into the room dumping the ice into a bowl. She grabbed my hand and put it into the bowl.

As the neighbor was putting my hand into the ice, we both heard my mother scream. We jumped up and looked out the door. My father was standing at the top of the stairs, while my mother was lying in the middle of a pool of broken glass and her own blood. My mother had somehow fallen on fish tanks from her failed pet store that had been stacked up next to the back stairs.

In a moment of spite, I thought that my mother deserved her accident for hurting me. I was sure that my father had pushed my mother. The neighbor grabbed me, turned me away from the sight, took me back inside her house, and placed my hand in the ice again.

In a extremely shy, soft, hesitant voice, I said, “Excuse me, ma’am. It doesn’t hurt, really. Thank you for helping me. I have to go now, please.” I was desperate to get back to my house and clean up the mess in the kitchen before I got in more trouble. Now that my mother was hurt, I knew that I would really be in for it.
I could not feel my hand at all and because I could see the bone, I had made up my mind that my hand was dead so there was nothing more that could be done. I could be doing lots at home to keep mother from being too mad at me. For starters, I knew that I would have to clean up the mess on the kitchen floor. It was my job, mom always told me, to keep the house as spotlessly clean as possible. That didn’t mean leaving grease and half cook chicken lying around.

I understood that it didn’t matter that my mother had made me spill it. This wasn’t the first time she caused me to spill something, but it was the first time that she had actually killed a part of my body.

“No, sweetie, you can’t go home right now. You and your mom are going in ambulance. They are coming to take both of you to the hospital. Now just try to hang on for me, honey. You’re being very brave, you know!” the woman said consolingly.

When the ambulance arrived, my mother was awake and we rode to the hospital together. The paramedic asked me what happened, but one sharp look from my mother was enough. If I told the truth, she was going to hurt me far worse than she already had.

I said I had spilled the cooking grease by accident. I knew that no one would believe me if I told them the truth. I had tried for so many years to tell everyone, my teachers, the doctors and nurses in the emergency rooms, even the mailman, and no one ever believed me. They all believed the lies my mother told.

* * *

At first, my mother and I were placed in the same emergency room. She was then moved I was left alone. I was used to being alone. It wasn’t long before I heard footsteps coming. A nurse walked in quickly followed by a doctor.

He quickly examined my hand, poking here and there to see if he could get a reaction from me. The doctor was being rough in the way he handled what me but I was used to being tossed around. I didn’t think it was strange that the doctor didn’t speak to me. In fact, the only time he spoke was to order the nurse to bring my father into the room.

“We are going to have to amputate the hand. There is no blood flow to the hand itself, and I seriously doubt that the fingers will ever function again. This is the worst third-degree burns I have ever seen. The grease complicates matters even more. It clings to what’s left, causing further damage.” the doctor was explaining.

I was paying close attention to everything being said. I learned by listening and watching those around me. Since I couldn’t read at this point, it was the only way I knew to educate myself.

“You’re fired! GET OUT!” my father yelled so loudly that even I was startled, though I was used to hearing him yell.

I quickly slid off the examining table, thinking that we would be leaving any minute. I knew what “fired” was; my mom had been fired from a lot of places. I also knew that it made people really mad, so I ran behind my dad just in case the doctor wanted to take out his anger on me. Everyone else did, so I just figured he would as well.
Both men left the room and the nurse followed them. I was left alone again. I didn’t know what to do. Were we going home? Why did my father leave me in here if we were going home? I climbed back up on the table and decided that I would examine my hand. Maybe I could fix it enough so that Daddy would be happy when he came back to get me. I was having problems, though, because I had to use my left hand to “fix it,” and I was right-handed.

I was so engrossed in picking at my hand that I didn’t hear the new doctor walk in. I didn’t even realize he was there until he gently took the tool away that I had been trying to examine my hand with.

The doctor immediately started yelling for the nurse as he gently stroked my hair, which was long and shaggy, given that I had never had a real haircut.
When the nurse came in, he chastised her for not staying with me. I thought that was strange, but didn’t say anything; I didn’t want the doctor yelling at me. Moments later, my father came back.

“I can see why Doctor Hails wanted to amputate the hand. There is no blood flow and sever nerve damage. I have to tell you, regardless of what I do; she may still lose the hand. Several surgeries will be required. If we are going to try we have to start now.”

This doctor was just as formal as the last one but there was gentleness in his voice. A sort of kindness that I had not heard before. It sounded like my dad’s voice when my mom wasn’t around.

I thought it was just plain stupid to talk about saving or losing my hand; after all, it was still attached to my arm. I didn’t get the chance to listen to more of the conversation, because the doctor firmly led my father out the door. This time the nurse stayed in the room, glaring at me.

Two hours later, the first of several operations took place. The doctors removed veins from my legs and used them to established blood flow into my hand.
“Put it out!!!! Please, it’s on fire, put it out!!! I’m burning!! PUT THE FUCKING THING OUT!,” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I had never used language like that. I had heard those words since I had grown up on the docks and all the fishermen used them, but I knew it was vulgar and not right for a young lady to say. I just didn’t care; for once, I wanted everyone’s attention and I certainly got it.

That night was the worst of my stay at the hospital. I had never been separated from my family before. The only time I was not with a family member was when I was in school. My mother did not allow me friends.

I was put in a strange room alone. It was getting dark, so I had gotten out of bed to turn the lights on but I couldn’t reach the light switch and the bed was too tall for me to get back in. l didn’t know that I could press a button and have a nurse come do it. No one had told me that. All I knew was my hand was throbbing to the rhythm of my heartbeat, and I was going to be alone in this place. It was worse than when mom would lock me away in a dark closet at home. I knew what was in that closet. At home, I didn’t hear other children crying down the halls and screaming like they were being tortured.

When the nurse came in to change my bandages she couldn’t find me. I had hidden myself in the small closet that was provided for patients’ clothing. It didn’t take her long to find me. I was scared to death that she was going to punish me for hiding. Imagine my surprise when she didn’t.

* * *

The eight months that followed blurred together in a long seemly unending painful moment. The nurses would come in and change my bandages. Ripping the gauzes off my hand when they became stuck to it. It didn’t take long for my body clock to learn the pattern. I knew exactly when the nurses were going to come in and change my bandages. Then it was time for the shots, for pain, to prevent infection, and to give back the vitamins that I was losing though the burn. By now, the veins in both my arms and one leg had collapsed from the repeated injections.

There were bright points to my existence. I had not seen my parents since the day I had been brought to the hospital. At first it was hard for me, since I missed my father. It didn’t take long for me to get used to life in the hospital.

For the first time in my life, I made a friend. My new friend was an eighteen-year-old boy who had been brought into the Burn Ward, burned over 95 percent of his body. Randy, my new friend, had been cleaning a garage with gasoline when his friends came up and started messing with him. They were lighting matches and blowing them out before they dropped them on the gas-soaked ground. One of the matches had not gone completely out.

Randy was in a rotating bed that kept his body turning over and over all the time so that his flesh didn’t fall off the bone. It was the only want to kept what was left of him together. The process sort of reminded me of giant chicken in a rotisserie grill.

Every night I would sneak into his room and we would talk for. Randy had a job. To me that meant he was free to do what he wanted. He could go anywhere that he wanted, anytime that he wanted. Most importantly, he didn’t have to live with his parents. Sometimes when I was alone in my room I would cry for Randy’s lost freedom. His life had been great, something that I wanted for myself, and now, here he was, stuck in this horrible place with me.

Our friendship was a short one, however, because Randy died one night while we were talking. He told me he was feeling rather strange. I had said I would get a nurse, when he simply sighed, and died. No fanfare like I had seen in the movies, no long-drawn-out good-byes. He was there one moment and gone the next. Death had come for Randy so quickly and quietly that I didn’t even realize what had happened.

I went and told a nurse that I thought something might be wrong with Randy. Another nurse took me back to my room and told me that I had to stay put.
Randy was gone and no one would tell me why. Finally, I ask my doctor. The nurse tried to get me to shut up when I asked but I was determined to find out what happened to my one and only friend. He told me that Randy had gone to heaven. I knew what that meant. I had seen many of my mother’s pets die.

After that, I cried quite a bit. I heard the doctor use terms like depression and posttraumatic stress but I didn’t know what they really meant. All I knew was that because of those words I was getting more medicine and that medicine made me feel strange. I didn’t like it and it wasn’t long before I stopped taking it. I started flushing them down the toilet so I didn’t have to take them and wouldn’t get in trouble if some nosy nurse found them.

Months later, I began to wander down to the Children’s Ward to watch television with the other kids. My favorite place to go was the Surgical Theater. I would sit for hours watching all the surgeries. I was totally and completely fascinated. But this exciting experienced came with a price -- infection.

* * *
“Honey, I need to speak to your parents. Can you tell me what time they normally come in?” the doctor asked me.

“Uh, well, they don’t. They don’t want me anymore. Mommy never did want me; she told me that lots of times. Since I didn’t clean the mess up in the kitchen, I am sure Mommy told Daddy that I can’t live there anymore.” These were the most words I had spoken to anyone in months, well, actually, since Randy died.

The doctor smiled that tight smile that I had seen in adults before, the one that means they are not really happy with you at all, and they are just smiling to keep from screaming. I cringed when he raised his hand to grab another bandage. I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t help it; I thought he was going to hit me. The doctor shook his head and left the room.

In the weeks that followed, he came in every day and explained the final two surgeries, one would get rid of the infection, and the other would make my hand look like new. He told me that there was a new medical process called a skin graft. That only a couple of hundred people in the entire world had this done. He also explained that skin from my buttocks (I giggled when he called my butt that word) would be put on my hand.

The doctor had the nurses bring me books every day. One of them asked me why it was that I didn’t read the books. I told her that I didn’t know how to read. I told her that instead of helping, my teachers just seem to ignore me.

From then on the nurse with the help of the doctor and a couple other nurses, taught me how to overcome what the doctor had called dyslexia. It took awhile but I finally learned to read.

Suddenly everything was different. The pain was still there but now I could pick up a book and get lost in someone else’s story. Before I would just make story’s up in my head to entertain myself, now I could write them down. I had to learn to use a pencil with my left hand, which was hard, but I learned.

I read everything that they brought me. I wanted to know everything and I wanted to know it now. I had even stopped going to the Surgical Theater, instead choosing to read a book or write a story.

* * *

The surgeries were completed, and for six weeks, my hand remained completely bandaged. The day finally came when the doctor walked excitedly to my room. He told me that today was the day I would get to see my new hand. He again told me it would no longer look bad that it would look like my other hand.

He started to take the bandages off. I screamed, not meaning to, but as he pulled the bandages, he was pulling new skin off as well. The new skin growth on the hand had grown into the gauze bandages. After several hours of soaking my hand and lots more pain medication, they finally managed to tear all the bandages off.

I had waited over a year for my right hand to look like it once had. I held back my tears as I looked at my new hand. It was horrible. 144 stitches were required to sew the grafted skin onto my hand. It reminded me of old Frankenstein movie where his hands had been sewn on.

“You lied to me.” I never spoke another word to him after that, or to the nurses, either. I had believed him when he told me that he would make it look like my other hand. As soon as they all left the room, I burst into tears.

Six weeks later, I was released from the hospital. My mother had come to get me, my Dad had not come. I was heartbroken. The last thing I wanted was for my mother to be the one that came and finally took me home but there she stood, my father nowhere to be seen.

As we waited for the taxi that my mother had called I suddenly wished I could go back to my hospital room. I didn’t care what they did, or how bad it might hurt. I didn’t want to go home with my mother.

When the taxi got there mom got in and didn’t even look at me. The nurse, thankfully, helped me get into the car. I had to knell, facing backwards, looking out the back window. It wasn’t until the taxi driver asked where we wanted to go that mom spoke. She gave the taxi driver an address that I didn’t recognize.

As the taxi pulled away from the curb, I realized that my parents had moved yet again. We moved around a lot never staying in one place for more than a few months. Mom and dad never bills. I knew because mom would make me answer the door when the bill collectors came. She would tell me to lie to them. When the bill collectors started coming to the door we would leave in the middle of the night. I felt a strange comfort in knowing that even though I had changed so much that my mom and dad were still the same.

Knelling, looking at the back window as the hospital fade into the distance, the look in my mother’s eyes promised pain, a lot more pain.

Learning to read was the most important thing that happened to me that year. It is possible that it is one of the most important things to have every happened to me. It gave me hope for the future. Hope that like my dead friend Randy, that I too might get a job and finally escape my parents.

Neither of my parents was ever charged with child abuse. They are both still alive today, although neither of them is in good health. I have never been able to have any closure with my parents on these matters. My father has refused to discuss them, and my mother no longer remembers them, since she has had several strokes.

I care for both of my parents. I drive them to their many doctor appointments, take them shopping, and even make sure that their house is clean and a pleasant place to live. I control their finances, since they never learn how to manage their money, make sure their bills are paid, and try to make they are as happy as I can. Many people have suggested that I put them in a nursing home and forget about them.

I have not forgiven them or forgotten what they did and what happened to me. I have simply chosen to be a person who honors the elders in her life, regardless of who or what they are. I made the decision to become the person that I wanted to be regardless of what they tried to make me.

I have never been overweight, despite my mother’s claims that I was overweight as a child. I am not the ugly creature that year after year she told me I was, and I am certainly not stupid. What I learned in that hospital was that I could be anyone I wanted to be. Learning to read gave me the ability to understand that I didn’t have to be what she wanted. By reading everything I could get my hands I came to understand that I was the one that got to decide who and what I became.